Theme of the week: Russian people on Randev with Europe

Vladimir Putin was not very hospitably accepted last week in Germany and the Netherlands. And the point is not only that the Femen activists attacked Putin Hanover, who told the president with the inscriptions on naked bodies everything they think about him. And not in the fact that in Amsterdam, representatives of the LGBT community entered the mass demonstration, protesting against the law adopted in Russia on the ban on "propaganda of homosexuality." Europe as a whole has long been no longer fascinated by Putin, and even in Germany they try not to remember what “its” European, almost a German-he speaks very fluently in German-it seemed to many once a Russian leader.

But not Putin one. His relationship with Europeans is only a small and probably not the most interesting chapter of a voluminous novel called Russia and Europe. A novel written in history and far from over. Narratives, in which there is a lot of love and hatred, affection and indifference, disappointment and delusions. The participants and guests of the European project are discussing today about how the relations of Russians and Europeans develop, whether political problems are reflected in everyday contacts and what is more important - fidelity to democratic values or consideration of economic pragmatism.